NBC Fall Premieres/FX Stuff

NBC's Summer/Fall 2012 Premieres (New Shows in CAPS)

Wednesday, August 8

"GO ON" (sneak peek following Olympic Games coverage)

"Go On" is a show starring Matthew Perry about a sportscaster who goes to rehab.  I follow a few people on twitter who have seen the pilot for this, and the review was not good.  

Sunday, August 12

"ANIMAL PRACTICE" (sneak peek following Olympic Games Closing Ceremonies)

This show's lead is Nancy Botwin's brother in law on "Weeds".  Apparently he's a vet who loves animals but hates the owners.  Just like the Chandler Bing project, reviews of the pilot have not been pleasant.

Monday, August 13

8-10 p.m. "STARS EARN STRIPES" (two-hour premiere)

10-11 p.m. "Grimm"

I don't know what the hell these are.

Wednesday, September 5

7:30-8:30 p.m. "NFL Kickoff Special 2012" (regular season)

8:30-11 p.m. "Sunday Night Football" (regular season)

COWBOYS

Sunday, September 9

7-8:15 p.m. "Football Night in America" (regular day and time)

8:15-11 p.m. "Sunday Night Football" (regular day and time)

 Monday, September 10

8-10 p.m. "The Voice"

 Tuesday, September 11

9-9:30 p.m.  "GO ON" (time period premiere)

9:30-10 p.m. "THE NEW NORMAL"

10-11 p.m. "Parenthood"

Parenthood is a drama and while it's not great, from what I saw in it's first two seasons wasn't that awful.  The New Normal is a new show featuring a gay couple.  I'm hearing it tries to be like Modern Family, but it's just not very good at all.

Wednesday, September 12

10-10:30 p.m. "GUYS WITH KIDS" (sneak peek after penultimate "America’s Got Talent")

Not really sure what it is, but my sources say the pilot was incredibly NOT funny.

Friday, Sept 14

9-10pm - "Grimm" (time period premiere)

Monday, September 17

10-11 p.m. "REVOLUTION"

I may actually give this a chance only because it has Giancarlo Esposito (Gus from Breaking Bad).  Early reviews say the pilot was now that revolutionary, but also insisted that it wasn't bad either.

Thursday, September 20

8:30-9 p.m. "Up All Night"

9-9:30 p.m. "The Office"

9:30-10 p.m. "Parks and Recreation"

Okay, now we're getting to the wheelhouse.  Season 2 of Up All Night is extremely important if you ask me.  I thought about half the episodes ranked in the decent-good range, and I thought the other fifty percent was absolute crap.  You could see the potential though. I'm interested to see if they try to create an arc or two, or if they stick to the same formula.  I could see this thing dying off after Season 2 if it doesn't progress.

The Office is really interesting just because we're talking about a show with an undetermined future.  More on this in the coming weeks.

Parks and Recreation gets a full order in Season 5 and will kick it off coming off a city council election win for Leslie Knope.  I'll definitely have a Season 5 preview up sometime before September, but I will say this...I think Ron Swanson (who was fairly quiet in Season 4) will be HUGE in Season 5.

Wednesday, September 26

8-8:30 p.m. "ANIMAL PRACTICE" (time period premiere)

8:30-9 p.m. "GUYS WITH KIDS" (time period premiere)

9-11 p.m. "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" (two-hour premiere)

Thursday, October 4

8-8:30 p.m. "30 Rock"

Final Season.

Wednesday, October 10

10-11 p.m. "CHICAGO FIRE"

Friday, October 19

8-8:30 p.m. "Whitney"

8:30-9 p.m. "Community"

This is what Community has come to.  It's been left to die on Friday nights.  The ratings will be awful, but that doesn't really matter.  If the show has marginal success in the first couple episodes, I could see it's 13 episode order getting extended (especially if the new comedies tank...which is likely).  As for Whitney, i'll spend another fall trying to understand how in the hell it didn't get cancelled.

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Other TV stuff...My same source watched two episodes of Charlie Sheen's new FX show "Anger Management", which premieres at the end of the month, and he said it was like pulling off a band-aid. He claimed he had to "power through" the second episode he watched.  I won't be surprised if it's as bad as he says, but I also won't be surprised if it has marginal success.  

On a side note, I really like what FX is doing.  While I don't really think Wilfred is that great, Louie is one of the best shows on television and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is ramping up for Season 8.  I'm pretty sure i'll hate the Russell Brand project and Sheen's new show, but I like that FX is expanding to more original comedies.

THE KILLERS NEW ALBUM TRAILER: BATTLE BORN

BREAKING BAD SEASON 5 POSTER

Yesterday Breaking Bad unveiled it's Season 5 poster.  Big deal, right?  For me, yes.

Did anybody else notice the machine gun on the right hand side of the poster?  Walt hasn't owned a machine gun before. Hmm....

Also, here's the official description that came with the release of the poster.  "No longer under the thumb of a mastermind criminal, Walt now assumes the role of one himself, as he and Jessie look to build their own empire."

If you haven't seen this show before, make room on your DVR.  AMC is re-airing the entire series beginning on Monday at 2AM.  Each night they'll show two episodes at 2 and 3AM.  Catch up!  It's a good.  16 episodes remain in the series, the first episode of the first half of those 16 airs on July 15.

WRAP PARTY: COMMUNITY SEASON 3

Season 3 of Community began with the video above.  A musical piece that shouts "we're gonna be less crazy" to the audience.  That musical piece couldn't have been more of a lie.  It could definitely be debated which season has traveled to the most extreme portals of insanity, but Season 3 definitely wasn't any less crazy as the cast promised in the opening minute of the season.

THE HIGHLIGHTS

S3 Ep2-Geography of Global Conflict:  One of my favorite episodes of the season.  It features Martin Starr (Roman from Party Down or @mkrenek) as professor of a Political Science class named Professor Cligoris.  Annie competes in a Model UN against an Asian Annie lookalike named Annie Kim.  Parks and Recreation also did the Model UN bit this season, and it really worked for both of them.  Oh yeah, Britta gets tasered by Chang.  Awesome!

S3 Ep4-Remedial Chaos Theory:  To me, one of the most unique episodes in television history.  A series Top 5 for me, and probably one of the more critically acclaimed episodes of Community's brief existence.  The episode features the main 7 at a party at Troy and Abed's house.  A game of Yahtzee turns into an episode that consists of different time lines.  Their game of Yahtzee is interrupted by the pizza delivery man.  The group  rolls the die to see who has to leave the table and go downstairs to get the pizza.  I guess you could say laziness is the beginning huge factor of the episode, but that's beside the point.  This is such a hard episode to explain, but in the end we find out that when Jeff leaves to get the pizza, everyone is happy.  When Troy leaves to get the pizza, the group goes crazy.  We learn in the tag that Pierce is dead, Shirley is an alcoholic, and Annie is in a mental ward.  Luckily, that wasn't the actual timeline.  It's confusing.  Just watch it.

S3 Ep5-Horror Fiction in Seven Spooky Steps:  Each member of the group tells a spooky story, while Britta tests them and the results have shown that one member of the group is insane.  This also features the jazz hit (and theme song for "Saxual Intercourse") from Michael Haggins that you can see in Episodes 14 and 15 of Cirque TV.

S3 Ep8-Documentary Filmmaking: Redux: The gang is asked to be actors and participate on the crew for a new commercial that Greendale is creating.  Things get loony when The Dean progressively loses his mind during the filming of the spot.  It's shot from the POV of Abed.  After watching this episode I realized Dan Harmon was telling us what we would soon learn about the way he runs things.  In the episode The Dean goes over budget, the production of the commercial goes incredibly longer than expected, and to top it off,  during the shooting of the episode Pierce plays the role of a diva and storms off the set.  We would later learn that this has actually happened more than during shooting of other episodes.  Also, adding to the aura of this sensational episode, this originally aired the week NBC announced that it had benched Community, causing an out roar of rage towards NBC among the hardcore fans like myself.

S3 Ep10-Regional Holiday Music: SNL's Taran Kilam guest stars as a glee class teacher.  He begs the members of the group to join the glee club, and eventually brainwashes them into joining one by one.  This episode is a direct shot at Glee.  In the end, we find out that the instructor of the Glee Club actually is a murderer.  This was the last episode before Community when on it's hiatus, so I think I also viewed this episode more closely than others just because I didn't know when the next episode of Community would air.

I thought the second half of Season 3 was much weaker than the first, but it still had some really solid episodes.

We find ourselves now awaiting Season 4, set to return in the fall of 2012.  One would think things will be much different. as the creator and mastermind of the series Dan Harmon has been relieved of duties as show runner.  Show runners getting replaced is not an unusual thing in TV land, but there aren't many show runners who possessed creative control like Harmon did with Community.  NBC ordered 13 episodes for Season 4, but I would expect that order to get extended because not many of the new programs coming to NBC look promising.  That's probably just me looking at this thing with the glass half full though.